Please
by Doommonger 22
Summary: 'In summary, her situation was not very good at all. "Help?" she cried experimentally.' A slightly altered ending to series 1, episode 22 "A Land Without Magic" in which Emma almost dies, Regina confronts Gold and Ruby gets a gun. [One Shot - rated for swearing]


**Summary:** 'In summary, her situation was not very good at all. "Help?" she cried experimentally.' A slightly altered ending to series 1, episode 22 "A Land Without Magic" in which Emma almost dies, Regina confronts Gold and Ruby gets a gun. [One Shot – rated for swearing]

**Disclaimer:** I don't own anything or anyone you recognise from Once Upon A Time.

**Author's Note:** An alternate ending (of sorts) to the first series, this starts just after Emma has given Gold the egg containing the 'True Love' magic. I wanted to show that despite what Regina believes, she really doesn't have any power at all over Gold, in this world or the fairytale world. After all, please _is_ the magic word. For this I'm using Isabella French as Belle's 'Storybrooke name'. Please read, review and enjoy.

**Please**

Emma Swan did a quick situation check. Regina had abandoned her, Gold had taken the egg and _then_ abandoned her, Henry was lying in hospital almost dead, and above all that, she was trapped in a very rickety elevator under a disused library, having just killed, of all things, a dragon. In summary, her situation was not very good at all.

"Help?" she cried experimentally. As predicted there was no response and the elevator remained resolutely stationary. "Damn it," breathed Emma, "it looks like I'm doing this the hard way." There was a ladder running up the side of the shaft but it didn't look in particularly good condition and Emma guessed that no one had ever had cause to use it. It was hardly a reassuring thought. "Come on, Emma," she said to herself sternly. "You can do this. You're the saviour of Storybrooke, you can't be harmed. And you definitely won't be beaten by something as stupid as a ladder." She started counting the rungs without thinking, but gave up when she got over fifty and was still nowhere near the top. Thinking about this wasn't going to help her. She took a deep breath and grabbed the closest rung of the ladder.

She'd climbed sixteen of the rungs, sixteen of the fifty she'd counted, before the seventeenth disintegrated into a million shards of overly-fatigued rust under her weight. She flailed for another handhold, lost her balance and fell backwards, landing heavily on the floor of the elevator. She lay on her back for a moment, wondering if she was dead or not, before deciding that she wasn't and sitting up. Unfortunately, as she did this a terrible screeching noise started up in her head. Emma groaned and tried to get the noise to go away, before realising with a start that the sound wasn't in her head but emanating from the elevator mechanism above her. It was the horrible sound of tearing metal. The lift lurched and dropped a couple of feet. Emma got a terrible sense of déjà vu – the last time she'd seen a situation like this, Archie and Henry had been stuck down a mineshaft and she'd been winched down to rescue them. But there wasn't going to be anyone winched down to rescue her – the only people who knew she was down there had both buggered off and left her to her now worryingly-inevitable death. Emma squeezed her eyes shut. She'd thought about how she would die before – more recently it always seemed to involve throwing herself Secret Service-style in front of bullets to save various residents of Storybrooke – but she'd never imagined it like this. Never alone, and certainly never in the dark. The lift lurched again and Emma had time to scream "Oh SHIT!" at the top of her lungs before the elevator dropped away beneath her. For some reason, she'd always imaged her last words to be slightly more profound…

Emma didn't fall very far before she jerked to an abrupt halt. In fact, if she hadn't been absolutely certain that she was about to plummet to her untimely death, she might just have been inclined to believe that she hadn't just died in a very untimely manner and that the hand clutching her wrist… hang on, wait! There was a hand clamped around her wrist? Well someone could bloody well have told her! She opened one eye a fraction to confirm that she was very much alive and that there was indeed a hand holding her in mid-air by her left wrist. Thankfully, the hand was attached to an arm and thankfully, the arm was attached to a body, a body that belonged to…

"Archie?" exclaimed Emma in disbelief. The ginger-haired psychiatrist just grinned down at her. Emma could see that he was suspended from a rope that trailed up and out of the doorway at the top of the shaft.

"I just thought I'd drop in, Sheriff," he said brightly. "And may I just say: your last words were rubbish."

X

It took a while, but eventually Emma was free of the elevator shaft, still not quite sure she could believe how narrow her escape had been. Her saviours were stood around her now – Archie, Jim the Gym Teacher and Ruby, who had thrown herself at Emma for a hug and very nearly caused the Sheriff to topple back down the elevator shaft they'd just spent so long rescuing her from. Even Regina was standing nearby and she looked, dare Emma say it, _happy_ to see the Sheriff was still alive. Upon seeing her, Emma had had a good mind to throw the Mayor down the elevator shaft for abandoning her to an almost-certain doom, but then she'd seen Ruby peeling the last vestiges of a roll of duct tape off of Regina's ankles and realised she wasn't the only victim of Gold's backstabbing.

"How did you find us?" asked Emma, taking care to say 'us' rather than just 'me'. Archie shrugged.

"I saw you and Regina go into the library from the diner. I was talking to Ruby about it and we saw Mr Gold go in." There was a poignant silence and Ruby took over the explanation.

"Then we saw Mr Gold leave," she paused, "without you. Then we started getting worried, so we geared up, grabbed Jim and came to find you. Just in time too – we found Regina trussed up like a turkey up here and you about to die unceremoniously down there." Emma was glad of her friends' quick thinking, but there was something else playing on her mind.

"So Gold's gone?" she asked, already knowing the response.

"Yes," spat Regina, "and he's taken the magic with him." The other three exchanged confused looks but didn't say anything. Whatever was happening was way over their heads and they were just happy to see Emma alive. Regina they could take or leave…

"So what do we do?" asked Jim. Emma could see why Ruby and Archie had decided to bring him along – the guy was more brawn than brains but he had been able to pull Archie and Emma out of the shaft, basically single-handed. Ruby and Regina hadn't exactly contributed a great deal in the way of strength. Emma thought for a moment, before deciding it was Regina who she needed to speak to.

"If Gold's got the magic…" she began, thinking of Henry. As if on cue, both Emma and Regina's phones went off. They checked who was calling, and they both went very pale. Ruby noticed their identical reactions.

"Who is it?" she asked.

"It's the hospital," they replied, simultaneously.

X

Five minutes later and Emma and Regina both knew what had happened. They were too late – Henry was gone. Emma felt like someone had decided to pull her heart out with a tow truck and had to sit down suddenly. People had warned her that her feud with Regina was only going to hurt Henry, but she had never expected it to get him killed. For her part, the Mayor was stood next to one of the boarded-up windows behind Emma, staring through the gaps in the panelling and clenching and unclenching her fists in time with her ragged breaths. Ruby was crying her eyes out into Archie's shoulder, while Jim was hovering uncertainly in the middle of the room, unsure what to say or do. They stayed this way for a very long time, each of the group absorbed in their own thoughts, before Ruby broke the uneasy silence.

"What happens now?" she asked, wiping away a stray tear with Archie's sleeve.

"I don't know," said Emma. "Honestly Ruby, I really don't know."

"You go, Miss Swan," said Regina quietly. Emma spun to look at her. After all this, Regina was telling her to leave! Her _son_ had just _died_! Was Regina out of her mind? "Go and be with your son," she continued. Emma frowned.

"What about you?" Regina's mouth twitched into the ghost of a smile, a nasty smile. She didn't look away from the window as she spoke.

"I have an urgent appointment with a certain pawnbroker and I really don't want to miss it." Ruby, Archie and Jim exchanged glances before Archie spoke out.

"With respect, Mayor Mills, we'd like to come too." It was only then that Emma realised that all three of them were armed. Jim had a baseball bat slung over one shoulder, Archie was wielding his umbrella – Emma guessed it would be a pretty lethal weapon if it was applied to the right part of Gold's anatomy with sufficient force – and Ruby…

"Rubes, I don't even want to know where you got that from," said Emma faintly. She thought for a moment. "Or _why_ you felt the need to bring it with you," she added.

Ruby was carrying a double-barrelled shotgun.

X

Six minutes later, the door to Mr Gold's shop was hurled open – causing the doorbell to practically explode in excitement – and one very angry Mayor and three equally angry citizens stormed inside.

"Mayor Mills," said Gold, pleasantly. He was stood behind the counter as usual, seemingly unperturbed by the four people invading his shop with a baseball bat and a shotgun or the fact that he had just effectively killed someone. "I wish I could say I was surprised."

"You know damn well why I'm here, Gold," Regina growled. "You killed my son." Gold's smile didn't falter at all.

"Technically, it was Miss Swan's son, and I didn't _kill_ him, I just didn't _save_ him. They're very different legally, Madam Mayor. But we'll get back to that momentarily. First I'd like to pick your brains about a certain patient in Storybrooke hospital's psychiatric ward. Miss Isabella French? I believe you've heard of her." Regina was caught totally unprepared.

"You found her," she said, completely unnecessarily.

"Technically, she found me, but that's beside the point." He stepped sideways and Reina caught sight of Belle in the backroom, sat with a cup of tea in one hand and a Taser in the other. She looked up, sensing that someone was watching her and her grip on the Taser tightened when she saw Regina. Gold stepped between them again, quickly. "Why don't you come in to the backroom and we'll have a little chat? You can fill in the gaps for me – Miss French's memory is more than a little hazy." For a split-second, Regina considered it, but she shook herself. He wasn't Rumpelstiltskin anymore – she held the power now, not him.

"The time for talking is over," she said calmly. It was a signal and her three companions raised their weapons. Gold was not in the slightest bit worried about any of them – Belle could probably drop Archie and Jim with her Taser, while the pawnbroker wouldn't be exaggerating too much if he said he could disassemble Ruby's shotgun quicker than the waitress could figure out how to fire it. He had, after all, been the one who had supplied Granny with the weapon in the first place. His usual calm façade was replaced with one of sheer, delighted victory.

"Perhaps, your Majesty," he said slowly. "But what if I say _please_?"

**Author's Note:** I was working on the principle that when Belle 'escaped' from the mental ward, the only 'Storybrooke memory' she would have would be the name she was admitted under (in this case Isabella French) which is how Gold knew what it was.


End file.
